Bitcoin Forum

I didn't have my bitcoin wallet.dat file backed up and my computer crashed.  I reinstalled it and sync'ed with the network.  I have my bitcoin addresses on paper.  How can I put them back into my wallet? 

If this is answered in another post, please link that post or give me the right terms to search with.  Thanks!

Do you have address and private keys both?

If you only have address it's useless without keys.

By "reinstalled" you mean OS reinstall?
Then they're probably gone.
There still is a small chance to recover it. Shut down the computer as soon as you read this, put the disk onto another machine (or boot from some Linux live CD) and wait for some skilled bitcoiners to find this thread and give you advice on how to possibly recover the lost wallet.

I have the address that looks like the address in your sig - 1Gu393d9rzVXWvAF3u12j17R3aVsnRKAT5 - .  What's the private key look like?

I do mean reinstalling the OS.  And I was worried about that. 

Just a reinstall or you formatted OS drive (Usually C drive) and then installed OS?

and you can read about private key here. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key

It COULD still be on the hard drive depending if you backed up your files or didn't reinstall certain parts, did you?

Wow...  :(
Small chance of recovery

Use your computer as little as possible
Download this (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/wxhexeditor/wxHexEditor/v0.22%20Beta/wxHexEditor-v0.22-Win32.zip?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fwxhexeditor%2Ffiles%2FwxHexEditor%2Fv0.22%2520Beta%2F&ts=1368400257&use_mirror=surfnet) to an USB drive
Report successful launch
Device -> Open disk device -> educated guess (ask here for help)
When the device is open: Edit -> Find
Search as TEXT, Options: only Match Case checked, Search: ckey! (which are five characters: 4 letters and '!') (Assuming your wallet is encrypted, if not encrypted, post it)
Wait (might take a few hours) and hope

If nothing is found, you'll have to contact a higher level recovery professional
If something is found, it's still far from being easy: just report here

I formatted the drive.  I wasn't aware that I needed the private key along with the public key to restore it.  That's a 3BTC lesson learned.

We are a half decade away, at least, from widespread BTC use.

And that's a good thing

It's a good thing there are so many massive barriers to entry into BTC?

First and foremost: Shut the computer down now! The longer you use it after deleting a file or formatting the disk, the smaller are the chances of recovering a file.

Two options:

1. Connect the HDD to another computer and install a file recovery utility like Recuva (http://www.piriform.com/recuva). You'll probably won't get proper names for the recoverable files, so just attempt to recover all that could be your wallet (e.g., all that are sufficiently small). Search inside the recovered files for one of your addresses; your wallet.dat will contain them as plain text.

2. Boot from a Linux Live CD and use PhotoRec (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec) to recover files and grep to search inside them for your address. This (http://superuser.com/a/578114) might help.

Didn't want to start a new thread, as this is also a Bitcoin wallet issue....

Block Chain Wallet.   Have made hundreds of transfers with it.   For the first time ever, I'm getting this message:

"ReferenceError: Undefined variable: precisionFromBTC"

when I try to make this transfer to another Bitcoin address.  The transfer doesn't execute and the Bitcoins remain in place.   

Any ideas?

A quick search of the forum for "precisionFromBTC" turns up the following:

Really? Because you're making my point. Internet usage was finally widespread a decade after 1993.

Bah!  Somehow I read that as "half century".

I'm in 100% agreement that mainstream use of bitcoin is probably at least a half decade away.

Damn.  I was looking for a fight! :)